Attacks of Levity
All human instincts can not be crushed, even by an act of Parliament, and sometimes the prisoners indulge in a flight of levity, which is, however, promptly stopped by the officer in charge. But even wilfulness and levity are to some a relief from the perpetual silence. A young girl, fifteen years of age, came in on a conviction of penal servitude for life. In a fit of passion she had strangled a child of which she had charge. In consideration of her youth and the medical evidence adduced at her trial, sentence of death was commuted. She was in the “Star Class,” and it aroused my indignation to witness her sufferings. A mature woman may submit to the inevitable patiently, as an act of faith or as a proof of her philosophy; but a child of that age has neither faith nor philosophy sufficient to support her against this repressive system of torture. At times, however, the girl had attacks of levity which manifested themselves in most amusing ways. One day she was put out to work in the officers’ quarters and told to black-lead a grate. With a serious face she set to work. Presently the officer asked whether she had finished her task, to which she meekly replied “Yes,” at the same time lifting her face, which, to the utter amazement of the female warder, had been transformed from a white to a brightly polished black one.
On another occasion she was told that she would be wanted in the infirmary. She was suffering great pain at the time, and had begged the doctor to extract a tooth. When the infirmary nurse unlocked her door she was found in bed. This is strictly against the rules, unless the prisoner has special permission from the doctor to lie down during the day. Of course, the officer ordered her to get up at once, to which she replied, “I can’t.” “Why not?” asked the officer. “Because I can’t,” the girl repeated. Whereupon the officer lifted off the bed covering to see what was amiss. To her astonishment she saw that the child had got inside the mattress (which I described in the beginning as a long sack stuffed with the fiber of the coconut), and had drawn the end of it on a string around her neck, so that nothing but her head was visible.
It has been said that no apples are so sweet as those that are stolen, and the great pleasure the women in prison derive from their surreptitious levity is because it can so rarely be indulged in, and the opportunities for its expression must always be stolen.
There is an axiom in prison, “The worse the woman, the better the prisoner.” As one goes about the prison, and observes those women who are permitted little privileged tasks, such as tidying the garden, cleaning the chapel, or any of the light and semi-responsible tasks which convicts like, one will notice the privileged are not, as a rule, the young or respectably brought up, but old, professional criminals. They know the rules of the prison, they spend the greater part of their lives there, and they know exactly how to behave so as to earn the maximum of marks; their object is to get out in the shortest possible time, and to have as light work as possible while they are in. The officers like them because they know their work without having to be taught. “There is no servant like an old thief,” I have heard it said. “They do good work.” This is quite typical of a certain kind of prisoner who is the mainstay of the prisons.
The conviction of young girls to penal servitude is shocking, for it destroys the chief power of prevention that prisons are supposed to possess, and accustoms the young criminal to a reality which has far less terror for her than the idea of it had. Prison life is entirely demoralizing to any girl under twenty years of age, and it is to prevent such demoralizing influence upon young girls that some more humane system of punishment should be enacted.